I know that there have been a lot of diaries about this, and I apologize if someone has already flagged these numbers. But the best calculation I can find of how many dishonest Clinton votes is from CNN's exit poll.

First, a definition. I am counting voters who voted for Clinton even though they intended to vote for McCain over Clinton in November. This is probably dishonest in the sense of Indiana law - in Indiana, to vote in the Democratic primary, you should have voted more Democrats in 2004 or intend to vote more Democrats in 2008. It is not necessarily dishonest in the sense that some fraction of these people may honestly prefer Clinton over Obama. Technically I suppose you could have been a true-blue democrat in 2004 but now prefer McCain, Clinton, Obama - but there are maybe a dozen voters like that.

Conveniently, CNN asked a question in their exit poll which fits my definition exactly.

The president of the United States admitted to approving torture last Friday. Right now, the ENTIRE rec list is made up of candidate diaries.

You can help this stop. All you have to do is not click the "recommend" button for candidate diaries. Yes, there are good ones. Yes, if you have something new to say about the primary, by all means, go ahead. But as long as you see a candidate diary on the recommended list (and there hasn't been a moment without at least one for months) do not recommend another one. And do not recommend that one either, to give the next one a chance.

That is all.

Bush's latest admission of approving torture meetings is the last shovelful of dirt on a camel who's back broke long ago. The facts behind it are not news, but the fact that he admitted it should be HUGE news.

''Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people'' by learning what various detainees knew, Bush said in the interview at his Texas ranch. ``And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.''

Problem is, impeachment is the classic media no-no. We can be right, and the media will only think us out-of-touch. We can have the majority of Americans agreeing that Bush should be impeached if he did these things, and the media will only think "oh, America favors impeachment if, but doesn't yet favor impeachment now - that must mean they've already judged him innocent. Old news." We can scream our heads off, and the media will only sneer at our hysteria (and there's nothing like a good sneer to infuriate people).

So how do we do this? We need strategy. I don't have all the answers, but I have some ideas. Read my ideas below, then please use this comment thread to brainstorm.

I just gave the largest political contribution of my life, by a factor of 2, to attack Democrats.

Here's the email I sent to my friends about it:

Some basics: Hillary cannot win on pledged delegates. She cannot even come close. My own calculations say that even if she gets a uniform 25% +/- .1% lead, she only closes the >160-delegate gap (conservative numbers after yesterday) by 124 (an extra delegate in all the 5-or-more delegate races and in half of the 4-delegate ones).

She can, however, win. If she convinces the superdelegates to break for her, or even gets Florida seated (Michigan is IMO impossible), she can take an average 10-point victory (which is not at all implausible, if the momentum shifts) and close the gap with superdelegates. Her current super- lead is around 50, that could easily grow to 75  or more if the remaining supers broke in the same proportions. This is not just practice, it is serious.

What are Obama's strategies?

I hear a lot of people complaining about the debate moderation. I support Obama, but I agree it was pretty predictably unfair to Clinton to have Russert there. But there's one thing I haven't heard too much, even though it seems to me like the most obvious point. So I'm going to say it with a poll:

I have been a Nader defender on DKos. I hate it when people lump Nader supporters in with Bush supporters, and when they forget what Gore/Leiberman 2000 was really like, or forget what "safe state" means. I tried to vote for Nader twice ('96 and '00, in '96 my voter registration was purged on some technicality so I couldn't vote). I do not regret those choices.

Yet this is just pitiful. No, not because he's "only hurting Democrats". If that's what he wants to do then that is his right, though I won't support him. But because he's only hurting his OWN stated principles, the principles which got him my vote twice.

I have a very specific reason for saying this.

I support Obama, and I think that by now it is clear he is going to win.

But Hillary Clinton is one of the strong democrats in the Senate, and a role model to millions of people - yes, including men - in the United States and around the world.

There are many here - including me - who have, in the heat of battle, exaggerated her flaws. I hope and believe that this will not persist once the fight is over. She is on our side.

We've all seen the analysis that they can't win on pledged delagates alone. We can all imagine the rancor if it gets ugly. Not now - but mid-March, when things are clearer - we all want them to work it out, one way or the other.

If things aren't crystal clear by then - for instance, if the margin is still tight enough that FL and MI swing things - I doubt either of them will want to just back down without a consolation prize.

But the VP slot is a horrible consolation prize. It doesn't help them in the general, and there are reasons for both of them not to really want it. Besides, either way, we would lose a real democrat in the senate (I know the VP sometimes gets a senate vote, but not the same).

I think that either one of them would make a great senate majority leader. And so I'm making this poll to see if you agree.

Note: when answering the poll, please think about both candidates. If one thing has been proven is that we have TWO strong contenders able to stay standing when anybody else would be out, so don't assume anything.

I have been googling around and they're really harder to find than you might think. All I want to know is, what are the popular totals for Clinton, Obama, Specific Other, and Uncommitted, INCLUDING CAUCUSES.

Multiplying vote numbers by percentages is fine.

I know, everybody says it's about the delegates. And I'm not claiming thats 100% anti-democratic - delegate totals tend to weight by population, not by voters, and that is good in many ways (corrects for the greater hassle of a caucus, for example, or for the open/closed primary difference). But if you want one, simple, unbiased number of who is REALLY winning and by how much, then you can't beat popular totals.

update: using the numbers from SloMoDem, total totals:

50.26% - 49.74%. Obviously both would be below 50 if you counted Edwards etc.

MSNBC:

Obama took the stage at Tulane... he seemed to have Clinton in his sights when he said, "You challenge the status quo and suddenly the claws come out."

I support you, and I'm a white male. But I do not tolerate coded racism from your opponent, and I do not tolerate coded sexism from you.

This is sexist code language, Hillary is the cat. It is subtle and most people will probably say "awww, he probably didn't mean it that way". I give you more credit than that, you know exactly how to use your words.

Please do not do it again.

And that is all I have to say about that. Keep challenging that status quo.

Update: Also, this is stupid. You already have the misogynist vote (like it or not), and women vote more anyway, especially in the Democratic primary.

On the phonebanking page of my.barackobama.com, there are 4 options: general GOTV phonebanking, Spanish phonebanking, and 2 flavors of woman-to-woman phonebanking. The Spanish phonebanking gives you some New Mexico numbers (505 area code).

The first page of the script are unchanged from what they had up this weekend, so I freaked out and started to write this diary to give you a better script. Not to worry: the body of the script has been updated for today. But the "leave a message" script is totally wrong! I have a script below.

If you get a person, all you have to do is change "February 5th" to "today" and follow it. However, if you get a machine, or if you are on Linux and do not have Flash or are using Gnash, the caucus location lookup tool is unusable - here are the links you need for that:

You know when you fall in love? At first you have reservations, you wonder if it can work... you try to hold back... but then they say or do all the right things, or at least enough of them, and you let go... and you fall... and you start to spend the day daydreaming about them, having fantasies... and really you're as much in love with the fantasies as you are with the real person...

After the debate last night, I'm about there with Obama. I'm so far on cloud 9 that even I, the most rabid Anybody-But-Clinton-ist imaginable, am even ready to be generous, to make nice with her. Because after last night, says the fanboy in me, she's gonna lose - and much as I fault her judgement on Iraq, it is really true that she can't get a fair break. She can't ride on Bill's positives, but I refuse to taint her with his negatives either.

I know it can't last. You fall in love, if you're lucky maybe it leads to marriage, and when things settle down, things aren't perfect anymore. You hate the way they leave their dirty shoes in the middle of the floor, and you fight about money, and things just aren't so romantic. But if you had really thought about all of that beforehand, you wouldn't have gotten married in the first place, and after all, that would be bad for your life expectancy...

1. Join Dodd in filibustering FISA.

Tell him to do so if you haven't already.

2. Have his campaign release a statement that he would urge his supporters to vote for the eventual democratic nominee.

People are allowed to support him but not Hillary, and he's allowed to point out this possibility. However, he should not do so without asking people to support the party. Shame on you, Barack.

The surprise is below the fold...

I'm going to start this diary out by saying something about the way things are to make each DKos constituency angry. Below the fold, I'll try to mollify all of you by talking about what could be. I'll keep track of who's angered or mollified in parenthesis.

The way things are going, Clinton is going to win this one. (angered: Obama "invested in hope" voters, cool-headed "wait for the voters" Koppels) Even when Obama takes SC, she just has too much of an advantage in too many states, especially the big ones, on Feb 5; and money is an issue too.

If she wins, it means we've wasted a once-in-a-generation opportunity (angered: Clinton voters). She doesn't inspire youth the way Obama does, and besides, she herself is like a Gore/Leiberman ticket (angered: Church of Saint Gore), something out of last century that, despite some outstanding aspects, is too polluted by the stink of unreciprocated compromise. She could even lose to McCain, where Obama will bring so many new voters that he'll sweep it.

The only one who can beat her is Obama. And the Edwards voters are the key.

Let me go through some alternative Edwards scenarios first, and say what's wrong with them.

I was an Edwards supporter, and I'm proud of it and proud of him. I hate it that our voting system forces me to choose a frontrunner because my candidate won't reach the artificial 15% viability threshold in my state. And I consider it my duty, and more important than which candidate wins, to teach people how easy it would be to fix this system with preferential voting, so I can vote my principles and still have a backup vote, to take from the lobbyistcampaignmanagerslime one of their ugliest, most fear-based weapons.

However, all of that is water under the bridge at this instant. I'm ready to vote for Obama. Still, when I see something like this proposed concession speech, I find it insulting to Edwards and to me. If - and ONLY if - Edwards comes in at under 15% in South Carolina - here is the crucial part of the speech that I would want to hear from him - AFTER several paragraphs of summing up the themes of his campaign and thanking the people who richly deserve it.

What happens when the dust settles on the early primaries and the "top three" dems become "top two"? I think it's nearly inevitable that coming out of the 4 early states, perhaps after just 1 or 2, it will be clear to everybody that there are only two really viable candidates. Current polling - like our broken electoral system - is almost all based on just picking your favorite, so much of it tells us nothing about how the support for the "losing" frontrunner would end up. But it is possible to guess - and I think that the results wouldn't favor Clinton. She may come out of the first four a frontrunner - and still lose as Edwards and Obama supporters team up behind whichever one of those two comes out stronger.

There are a few things that we can do to help this to happen... And they're things we should be doing anyway.